


Today Never Happened

by ChokolatteJedi



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 20 Random Facts, Angst, Gen, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-29
Updated: 2006-12-29
Packaged: 2017-10-14 05:00:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/145640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChokolatteJedi/pseuds/ChokolatteJedi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A songfic to the Switchfoot song "I Dare You To Move," focusing on the lives of five members of the Black family at a certain point in time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Today Never Happened

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Iulia_linnea's [Harry Potter Random Facts Fest](http://iulia-linnea.livejournal.com/226238.html). Beta'd by the wonderful My Sweet Koinu.
> 
>  **Meme Prompts Used:** Wildefan's [20 Facts about Regulus Black](http://wildefan.livejournal.com/448077.html), Prompt #1, 11, 20; softlyforgotten's [20 Facts about Bellatrix Lestrange](http://softlyforgotten.livejournal.com/41649.html), Prompt #11, 12, 13, 14; jandjsalmon's 20 Facts about Draco Malfoy, Prompt # 3; therealw's 20 Facts about Narcissa Malfoy, Prompt # 9,14,18; meddow's 20 Facts about Nymphadora Tonks, Prompt # 1, 12, 15; chokolattejedi's [20 Facts about the Black Sisters](http://chokolattejedi.livejournal.com/61854.html), Prompt # 6;

Draco lay on his back on the garden wall, his head pillowed in his hands. Malthus, his house elf, was sitting by his head, because Daddy said he couldn't go outside without Malthus. Draco knew that no matter what, you did what Daddy said. Right now it was late evening, and Draco would have to go to bed soon. But first, because he was good today, Mommy had said that he could go watch the fog clear away.

Regulus lay on his back, arms above his head, staring up at the night sky. Narcissa was laying beside him in the same position, and Andromeda was a few feet away on a different grave. They had been making a game of finding all of the constellations that were on their family tapestry. Andromeda had just turned seventeen, so she was performing a tricky little spell. It would draw the constellations out in the air when they found them. They had found Orion instantly, and Sirius and Arcturus immediately after. Those were always the easy ones.

Tonks flopped back onto her bed in annoyance. Stupid meditation. She didn't know why Charlie had suggested it in the first place - he knew her too well. It required that she sit perfectly still, and she just got too fidgety. She'd never been able to sit perfectly still in her whole life, and Charlie knew that as well as anyone. It wasn't going to help at all. She sighed, letting her annoyance whoosh out of her. Did it really matter that much knowing _exactly_ what she looked like?

Bella lay on her back on the floor of her cell. The ceiling was low and grimy, covered in decaying bodily fluids and who knows what else, but Bella had stopped seeing it long ago. The physical walls around her didn't matter - it was the Dementors that kept her imprisoned. Bella shuddered. She hated Dementors.

Narcissa lay on her bed, small handwritten notes surrounding her. Their flowery language and spidery handwriting still mocked her after all these years. Still mocked her because she knew very well who had written them, and she knew very well that it wasn't the husband who didn't love her. She closed her eyes with a gentle sigh. Now she just had to figure out what to do with the letters, and what she could ask of the person who had written them so many years ago.

 **Welcome to the planet  
Welcome to existence  
Everyone's here  
Everyone's here  
Everybody's watching you now  
Everybody waits for you now  
What happens next  
What happens next**

Draco loved to watch the fog clear away. It would swirl around in all different shades of grey, like his and Daddy's eyes, and then little pieces would break apart and there would be the darkdarkdark sky behind them. And then Draco and Malthus had a game of finding the stars that peeked through.

Regulus found Cycnus without much trouble, and Andromeda found her namesake fairly quickly - she always did. Then Regulus was able to find Cassiopeia, and Narcissa pointed out that they had skipped Bellatrix, which was inside Orion. Uncle Alphard was the "heart of the snake," and was in the Hydra, and Andromeda drew it in.

Tonks groaned. Yes! Yes it did matter exactly what she looked like! It mattered because according to what she had worked out last week, she had spent at least four months of her life trying to figure out what she looked like. And for all she knew, she looked exactly like her Aunt Bellatrix. Which wouldn’t be that bed except for the fact that her Aunt Bellatrix was evil.

Bella didn't just hate the Dementors - she was terrified of them. Just thinking that she was terrified of something was laughable, but it was true. And she was too cowardly to admit it, even to herself. Even in her whispered dreams in the middle of the night that felt like a completely different world full of half forgotten images. No! She would not be afraid. She could not be afraid.

Narcissa had ignored the rumors when she was in school - the ones about Lucius and Bellatrix - mostly because Bella had sworn they weren't true, and Narcissa believed her. And Narcissa really did love Lucius, and she loved the idea that they matched so well. She didn't know why she didn't have the "classic Black beauty" which seemed to rely on having dark hair and intense eyes like Bella and Sirius, but Narcissa had accepted the fact that she was grey-eyed and blonde. And the nice thing about Lucius was that he was blonde and grey-eyed too.

 **I dare you to move  
I dare you to move  
I dare you to lift yourself up off the floor  
I dare you to move  
I dare you to move  
Like today never happened  
Today never happened before**

Draco's eye caught a glimpse of light. "Ooh! Ooh! There's one, Malthus!" he whispered, pointing. Seeing the very first star was worth double. It wasn't a very big star, and it wasn't a particularly bright star, but that didn't matter. At the moment, it was the very biggest and very brightest star in the sky, and it was farther away from Daddy and being a "proper Malfoy" than Draco was.

Regulus started searching for his own star while Narcissa found the Gemini constellation and their Great Uncle Pollux's star. For some reason, Regulus could never find his own star until someone else had pointed it out. He knew where it _should_ be, and what the Leo constellation around it _should_ look like, but for some reason they always managed to elude him.

Tonks had asked her parents over and over again. They both said that she had a few wisps of black hair when she was born, which Tonks was alright with. The majority of her mother's family had black hair, and her father's ranged from blonde to black, so it was a good color hair to have. And the general consensus was that she didn’t learn how to change her facial features until she was five, so the sort of heart shape her face was now was probably correct, or the closest thing to it.

Bella tightened her hand into a fist and felt something poking her skin. Bread crusts. _Sirius's_ bread crusts. That stupid berk was thinner than she was, but every few days he would slip a crust through the bars. Didn't he realize that it didn't matter? It didn't matter if his mother taught him to share, or to never let a lady suffer, or to protect his cousins, or any of those stupid things Aunt Walla would have said.

Narcissa was very big on matching. She didn’t want to marry another person with black hair and intense eyes, because any children they had were sure to look the same, and then she would be the odd one out again. That was why, at the very beginning, she chose Lucius instead of - she chose Lucius.

 **Welcome to the fallout  
Welcome to resistance  
The tension is here  
Tension is here  
Between who you are and who you could be  
Between how it is and how it should be**

Draco didn't mind being a Malfoy most of the time, and it was fun to boss around his new tutor, who had started just after his fifth birthday. But most of the time there were just too many rules and things Draco was not allowed to do, like run or laugh or play with his toys except for his ten minute break between lessons.

Regulus's uncle had laughed at him once, because he couldn't find his own star. He had said that the Regulus star was the twenty-second brightest star in the sky. It wasn't as bright as Sirius, which was the first, or Pollux or Arcturus, but it was still up there on the list. He had said that it should be no trouble to find.

Tonks closed her eyes and rubbed them. It was her eyes that were giving her all the trouble. Her parents loved telling about how she changed her eyes to match her fathers when she was handed over to him in the hospital. It was how they knew she was a metamorph, and they were all very fond of describing the perfect shade of crystal blue that she matched. But no one could recall exactly what her eyes looked like before she changed them, except that they weren't the perfect blue.

Bella wasn't helpless, and Sirius didn't need to maintain this charade of family manners and loyalty. Because he wasn't her family any more. He hadn't been her family since his first night in Hogwarts, and he just couldn't see that. She was part of a bigger family now, and her Master would not let her die here.

Narcissa had toyed with the idea of pursuing the note-writer, or abandoning Lucius and running to someone who would love her, "more than the stars in the skies and in your family." She contemplated giving up her ideal family and finding someone who was passionate about her, instead of passionate about his _Master_. But it was many years too late for that.

 **I dare you to move  
I dare you to move  
I dare you to lift yourself up off the floor  
I dare you to move  
I dare you to move  
Like today never happened  
Today never happened before**

Draco spotted another star and pointed it out to Malthus, who applauded his eyesight. Malthus did things like that a lot. He would carry Draco with him sometimes when he popped away, and he would sneak Draco snacks from the kitchens. And Malthus would make Draco's tutor forget that he had escaped and hidden in different rooms of the manor all day instead of studying. He claimed it was because he liked Draco.

Regulus had thought about that for a long time, actually. It looked like there were millions of stars in the sky, but there could be less than that. Even if their were only ten thousand visible stars in the sky, and on any given night maybe a hundred of them were covered by a wisp of cloud or outshone by a plane, or something like that, there were still 9900 stars left to look at, and his was the 22 brightest. 22 out of 9900! Anyone should have been able to see it! Why just being in the top fifty should have been enough. But for some reason, Regulus could never find his star.

Tonks was sure that that meant that her eyes were some dark color. A light green or amber, or even a greyish like her Aunt Narcissa would have been memorable. The only thing that wouldn't be memorable would be a dark color, like black. And that brought Tonks back to the picture she had of her mother and aunts and uncles from their Hogwarts' days. Narcissa was in the middle, her blonde locks a sharp contrast to the others. The other four all had it - the deep black hair with the bluish highlights and the dark piercing eyes.

Bella closed her eyes, blocking out the image of the dying man. The only problem was that Bella didn't even know if her Master was still alive - still trying to find her and bring her back to him. He had promised, but he had also sworn to be immortal, and _Sirius's god-brat_ had ruined that. Maybe Reg - NO! No, no, no, he was wrong. They had both come too far to get out, and that was his mistake. Regulus was wrong.

Narcissa made her choice, and now she had to do something to fix it. She lost her sister and husband to a crazed Dark Lord, and no matter what she said, a tiny part of Narcissa still mourned and loved them. But she would not lose her son to the same cause. Draco was all Narcissa had left - her perfect paper doll son from the perfectly matching family. She had to save him, she had to save her dream.

 **Maybe redemption has stories to tell  
Maybe forgiveness is right where you fell  
Where can you run to escape from yourself?  
Where you gonna go?  
Where you gonna go?  
Salvation is here**

Draco wasn't sure what to think about that. He thought that it might be something like having a friend, but Daddy said that house elves were some of the lowest forms of existence on this planet and were only good for shining boots. Draco wasn't sure exactly what that meant, but he knew that it didn't sound like what would make an acceptable friend for a Malfoy. He closed his eyes, ignoring the stars. He didn't want to think about being an acceptable Malfoy. He just wanted to be Draco

Regulus closed his eyes, tuning out the girl's soft chatter, hoping for a fresh perspective on the sky that might reveal his star. Somehow, the idea that his star was hiding from him filled Regulus with a kind of sinking feeling in his stomach. He just knew that it was an unlucky life, to live in the shadow of your star.

Tonks hated that picture, because in it she could see - she could see the beautiful young woman her Aunt had been. The deep, calculating eyes, the soft black curls, the pouty red lips that twisted just slightly at the corner into a sneer. The "heartbreaker of Slytherin" with the heart-shaped face.

Bella wouldn't make the same mistake as Regulus. She wouldn't get scared of herself and run away. It didn't matter anymore that she didn't care about killing. It only mattered that Bella was her Master's favorite, and she believed in him.

Narcissa hated the man that her sister and husband served, because he had broken her family. Now she would go find the man she had abandoned, and see if he would agree to save what was left of her family. She didn't have anything but his old words of love to barter with, but she hoped it would be enough to sway the dark man. For Draco's sake.

 **I dare you to move  
I dare you to move  
I dare you to lift yourself up off the floor  
I dare you to move  
I dare you to move  
Like today never happened  
Today never happened  
Today never happened  
Today never happened before**

"Draco? Time to come inside now and get ready for bed!"

"Regulus? Narcissa? Andromeda? Mother says it's dinner time now!"

"Tonks? Charlie is in the fire for you; he wants to know if his suggestion helped!"

"Bella? Bella you need to eat!"

"Narcissa? Are you ready to go yet? And where are we going that's so important?

Draco opened his eyes and rolled off the low stone wall. "Come on, Malthus," he said sadly.

Regulus opened his eyes and rolled over into a crouch. "C'mon, guys," he poked Narcissa.

Tonks opened her eyes and rolled … off the bed with a thud. "Coming!" she called down the stairs.

Bella opened her eyes and rolled over so that she couldn't see Sirius. "Come, my Master," she whispered

Narcissa opened her eyes and rolled over, scooping up the letters and hiding them. "Coming, Bellatrix!" she called, locking her bureau.

 

Time to move.


End file.
